Spy boss warns Kasrils to keep quiet
Spy boss Arthur Fraser wants to gag former intelligence minister Ronnie Kasrils, warning that he will face legal action if he does not stop discussing the agency’s affairs in public.
Fraser’s ultimatum is contained in a letter sent to Kasrils on November 8.
He orders Kasrils to stop talking to the media about his experiences as intelligence minister, claiming that he was revealing state secrets and breaking his oath of office.
“Having served this government with distinction as you did, you will appreciate the implications and difficulties that come with ventilating matters of security in the public domain . . . I must request that you desist from making comments related to any secret matter in the media,” wrote Fraser.
He accused Kasrils of confusing “legitimate issues” with the “general narratives that are peddled in the media by people whose interests may not be genuine”.
Fraser, the director-general of the State Security Agency, has been implicated in the mismanagement of state security funds by author Jacques Pauw, who in his book The President’s Keepers claimed that up to R1billion of taxpayers’ money was wasted on a project headed by Fraser.
Two reports by the inspector-general of intelligence found that an audit of the Principal Agent Network project “indicated a possibility of acts of theft, fraud, forgery and uttering of an amount exceeding R200-million”.
In the book, Pauw alleges that Fraser had set up a slush fund to allow agents to defraud the government of millions, an allegation Fraser and his family have dismissed as “classic journalistic deception”.
During an eNCA TV interview on November 6, Kasrils spoke about the allegations against Fraser, saying: “Let them show on the table the facts so that we can judge as people, the media, without need for a drawn-out inquiry that takes years as in Jacob Zuma’s Stalingrad defence.”
Kasrils said that what Fraser was alleged to have done had happened after his departure as intelligence minister. “This happened after I left and that’s what Jacques Pauw exposes and makes in his allegations. What disturbs me and became clear from the [National Intelligence Agency internal affairs] investigative unit of three people who came to see me was that there were funds that were being misappropriated. On the basis of that unit [investigation] I can’t say whether that was correct or not,” said Kasrils.
Fraser threatened to take legal action against Kasrils for speaking out about allegations levelled against him and the SSA.
“Before the letter is misconstrued in the media as an attempt to silence you, I address this letter to request that you raise matters that pertain to your tenure as the minister for intelligence services responsible for the National Intelligence Agency, as it was during your term, with the relevant oversight structures,” said Fraser.
This week, Kasrils, who is preparing a court battle against Fraser for allegedly forging his signature to purchase warehouses, farms and spy equipment, said Fraser had not given any reasons to show that Kasrils had violated any laws.
In his response to Fraser, through his lawyers, Kasrils wrote: “It is apparent from my eNCA interview that I have in no way contravened classified information. Arthur Fraser has yet to specify in that statement or in any other that I have done so. Given the lack of confidence and trust the public has in the security agencies, and [the] criminal allegations that have featured him and numerous others, it is his duty and that of President Zuma, who has appointed him, to openly clarify the investigations conducted into him and his affairs as contained in Jacques Pauw’s book, and not seek to hide behind a cowardly curtain of secrecy. This only serves the dangerous and repugnant ethos of impunity which has come to characterise the Jacob Zuma administration.”
SSA spokesman Brian Dube said Fraser was convinced that Kasrils had made comments about the agency inappropriate for a former minister, in relation to Pauw’s book.